Treat Her Right
by theUglySpirit
Summary: I had never been to Oklahoma City before July 6, 1964- the day I entered the State Women's Prison. I spent every day for 23 months acting the model prisoner, and every night dreaming up ways to get Tim Shepard back for putting me there. By the time I walked back through the gates on June 16, 1966, I figured I had a pretty good plan. Language, drug use, etc.
1. The 11th Commandment

SE Hinton owns The Outsiders and the Shepard clan. The title comes from the song originally done by Roy Head and the Traits in 1965 and then covered by just about everyone else in creation.

**Treat Her Right**

** A 1960s Tale of Romance, Treachery and Legion Baseball**

_I wanna tell you a story that every man oughta know..._

One- The Eleventh Commandment

I had never been to Oklahoma City before July 6, 1964- the day I entered the State Women's Prison. I spent my days being a model prisoner- in the garden, in the library, in Voc. Rehab learning to type. I spent every night for 23 months dreaming up ways to get Tim Shepard back for putting me there. By the time I walked back through the gates on June 16, 1966, I figured I had a pretty good plan.

You might think the most important thing to know at the beginning is what a girl does to get sent to prison at the ripe old age of eighteen. Knowing that will allow you to decide whether or not you're going to go along with the rest of what I'm going to tell you. If it turns out that I'm a cold-blooded killer, you're probably going to write me off. But if I was a cold-blooded killer, I wouldn't be getting released after 23 months, would I?

In the grand scheme of things, my crime was pretty low down on the food chain. I wasn't considered dangerous in or out of the pen. I'm not a violent person and I had to work up to being devious. What I did was break the Eleventh Commandment- the one particular to street racers and greaser boys in my neighborhood: Thou shalt not get caught.

I got caught, but Tim Shepard let me go down alone. I was young, stupid, and I thought I was in love. I could have taken him down with me, but I didn't. I had 23 months to think over how dumb that was.

I'm a numbers girl, so I'm not much of a storyteller. I tend to want to start with the known variables and work my way back to x. The most important day of my life- almost a second birthday, if you will- was June 16, 1966. That's where I tend to want to start. Everything that happened before didn't matter as much as that minute the gates ground open and the first empty stretch of highway I'd seen since the previous July spilled open in front of me.

It was hot, but not as hot as on the inside. They'd let me take a shower that morning and pick out a second-hand dress from a bin in the prison laundry. Some church relief group collects clothes for inmates who don't have anything to wear once they're released. There's nothing in that bin that's going to catch any man's eye, I'll tell you that. The only thing I could find to fit me was a house dress with little pink flowers on it. I found some shoes too- flats, no heel. I found a slip that was too short, but fit around my hips. I think it might have been a child's.

I left the prison with three other girls. For a full five minutes, none of us said a word. We just stood there in front of the gate and got the feel of the wind blowing. The sun was hot reflecting up off the asphalt, but the wind felt good.

The breeze died down a bit, and someone spoke:

"Where y'all headed?"

"My old man's coming," said another. "Says we'll stay here tonight and party it up good. Then back up to Ponca City. What about you, Leda?"

She and I had seen each other around on the inside.

I shook my head and kept on looking at the sky.

"Anybody going to Tulsa?"

The third one spit in the grass and said, "Shit, girl, you ain't even called anyone to pick you up? You got parents, don't you? God knows you ain't old enough to have a husband."

I smiled and shook my head at her, dragging my gaze away from the wind in the trees. I didn't want to go into it- how I had parents, but I also had a brother headed to Vietnam and his whereabouts were a hell of a lot more important to them than mine.

"Didn't think to, I guess," I said.

"If Jimmy gets his ass here before we all get arrested again for loitering, we can get you as far as Muskogee. It's an over-shot, but it's closer than here, ain't it?"

I nodded and said 'thanks'. Her name was Bernice, and I'd seen her fight before. I couldn't remember what she'd been in for- maybe running liquor. I seemed to remember that Jimmy'd been locked up, too, but had gotten released earlier.

Jimmy got there- pulled up in a '56 Chevy that had just been washed for the occasion. He hadn't done anything about the tears in the upholstery, but Bernice and I hardly cared. I waited in silence while they had their reunion. When they got done kissing, Bernice stepped back and introduced me. I couldn't tell from the look on Jimmy's face if he expected me to interfere with their plans for the day or if he thought he could cajole me into joining in. He looked me over real good- until I got annoyed enough to look at him straight back.

"Tulsa?" He said and thought about it. "How's Bristow? You get your gate money? You pay for gas, I'll take you up to Bristow, and then me and her can cut back across."

"Christ, baby, if you're gonna take her to Bristow, you're on the Turnpike. You might as well take her all the way to Kellyville."

"I'm all the way up to Kellyville, I might as well go to Tulsa, and then that's our day and our night shot to shit…"

And they were arguing again. Two minutes back in each other's arms, and I could already see it: get a bottle of white port split between the two of them, and they'd be at each other's throats. I wanted to be good and clear of them by the time that went down.

"Bristow's good," I said. "I'll put gas in. Let's just get away from here before the sun comes around. The glare off the wall will fry us."

Bernice knew the truth of that well enough. She gave Jimmy a shove back towards the driver's side. She got in shotgun, and I got in back. Jimmy drove us to a gas station, and then to a liquor store, and then on to the freeway headed north.

I put my legs up on the back seat and lay back with a Tootsie Pop in my mouth and the wind in my hair. It was early enough summer that the hills were still green and there wasn't yet any dust. A butterfly on its way got sucked into the window and landed on my arm. I poked it on to my finger.

"Look at that," Bernice said. "In the wind- just like you and me- huh, Leda?"

I smiled at the butterfly and watched its wings flutter in the wind.

"They always come back," I said. "Every year, they come back here from Mexico. They call it genetic memory. It ain't the same ones- they're all dead. It's the next generation. They always go back where they belong."

"Kind of like us going back to Muskogee," Bernice said. "Ain't it, Jimmy?"

Jimmy smiled at her and said something that I couldn't hear. I reached towards the window and let the butterfly get pulled out on the updraft.

Jimmy cackled at that.

"I don't think that one's going to make it to Muskogee," he said.

* * *

My parole officer was a large, sweaty woman with this piece of wisdom for me:

The first was to marry and get settled with the first man who would have me because, she said, "your choices are pretty limited from here out. If he don't knock you around, that's the bar. You ain't in a position to ask for much more."

She frowned and looked at me, standing there- half her size- in my flowery farm girl dress. There was something she disapproved of as she looked me over.

"The first man you find, that's all I have to say."

She shook her head like she expected that might take me a while. She pushed a piece of paper across her desk at me. "I called her this morning, and she's looking for someone to work. Can you make a bed right- like in a hospital?"

I nodded, although it was a lie. I'd never worked in a hospital.

"She's a friend of mine. She runs a hotel, and she's looking for a girl to clean rooms and make beds. She'll board you and pay you a little on top of it. You might have to take a second job if you want to put any away, but that'll keep you out of trouble."

I thanked her. I wanted to ask if she meant _until I meet this charming man who won't beat me_, but I kept it to myself.

"Her name's Marva," the parole officer said. "If she thinks she can trust you, after a bit she might let you run the till. You graduated high school, didn't you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

I was supposed to go to tech school. My mother's aspirations for me weren't much greater than the PO's- she intended for me to go to college to catch a man and not much else. I had wanted to take courses in accounting.

The PO pointed at the piece of paper.

"You can walk there. Three blocks east, then two north. You'll see it."

"Yes, ma'am. Thank you."

"And I want to see you back at the end of the week. You and me- we'll be pretty close for the next two years, but I'll back off some if you don't raise any Cain. I'll be calling Marva to check in on you."

I nodded. She nodded back and let me go, and I started walking towards the hotel. I found it- a one story stretch of rooms with an office and an apartment at one end, just like the joint Norman Bates ran. I went to the office and found Marva behind the counter. I told her my name.

She asked me, "You met Fern?"

I frowned. I didn't know if that was the PO's first name.

"In the joint?" Marva said. "My sister Fern Caroll, she's in there for twenty. She stabbed her husband."

I thought about it. I wasn't considered to have an affinity towards violent behavior so I didn't spend a lot of time with the violent offenders. They even let me work in the garden with shovels and sharp things. That's how I got so tanned.

"I was only there a couple years," I said.

"Hmm. I'd think locked up for any amount of time you'd get to know everybody."

"No, ma'am," I told her. "It's a big place. And it was only two years."

The _only_ part was bullshit. It felt like a lifetime.

First thing I did when Fern showed me to the room that was to be mine was turn on American Bandstand on the little clock radio by the bed. I didn't even sit on the bed. I sat on the floor because I could and no one was there to tell me not to and listened to top forty radio out of Austin.

The first song I heard was Tina Turner singing "Make 'Em Wait". I loved the sound and hated what it was saying. _One of these days you're going to reach eighteen_…Eighteen was gone. I was twenty years old, on parole until I was twenty-two, and changing beds in a motel. I didn't know what clothes girls were wearing or how they did their hair. I could only guess the girls were still watching the guys race on The Ribbon, but I wasn't ready yet to go up there and find out.

I'd had a shower that morning in Oklahoma City, but it was a prison shower. Eleven hours later, and I had a shower of my own. I got up, turned off the radio, and unbuttoned my dress and let it fall to the floor.

I went in to the bathroom and turned the water on. Because I could, I shut the bathroom door behind me even though nobody was going to walk in. I washed my hair, washed my face, and shaved my legs. Then I stood and let the water run down my body until I felt the urge to touch myself. When I did, it was him I still saw when I closed my eyes. I just went with it, but I should have taken it as a warning. All this time, and as far as Tim Shepard gotten me, and he was right back into my head again. I thought I was smart, but it was going to take a lot more than two years of my life taken away to get him out from under my skin.

_a/n: Turns out there were no female parole officers in Oklahoma prior to 1967. I really wanted the PO to be a woman, though, so I kept it as is._


	2. The Sleeper

SE Hinton owns the Shepards.

**Treat Her Right**

Two- The Sleeper

You might say I was trying to be Tim Shepard's sleeper girl: the one he didn't see coming. That was my intention when I got out of prison.

A sleeper, if you're unfamiliar with the terminology, is a car that appears on the outside as it did coming off the factory floor only worse. On the surface, she's unassuming and maybe even abused. She's the one everyone will bet against in a drag because she looks like your granny's car all beat to shit. She's the one that'll blow their socks to Kingdom Come in final sixty-six, though, because it's what she's got under the hood that counts.

Before prison, it was my car that Tim and his buddies fashioned into their sleeper. On paper, the car belonged to my brother. He left her in a barn east of town when he went to Basic in September of '63. When it became clear he wasn't officer material and was going to get shipped, he called me and told me I could take her out and drive her to work. She'd sat for a winter by then, and the woodchucks had got there before me.

I got a ride out to the barn from a friend of my father's. He was on his way to work on the oil rigs, so he left me there. The car started right up, but was overheating by the time I got the barn door shut. I didn't know much about cars then, so I figured I could make it back to town if I kept putting water in the radiator. No such luck: she burned through the oil and threw a rod- which is a terrible sound if you've never heard it. Like some devil's throwing rocks around under the hood.

A woodchuck, it turned out, had cozied up inside the engine for the winter. Woodchucks are compulsive sons of bitches. They'll gnaw on anything, and this one had gnawed all the hoses. The coolant had long since run out. The engine overheated and beat itself to death. I walked back to town alone.

I walked to a roadhouse on the far north side that I'd been to partying a few times. It was safest to go in to a place like that with a boy on your arm and there was always a boy willing to take you because girls could buy at eighteen and boys had to be twenty-one. Sometimes you left with the same boy, sometimes not. The couple of times I'd been to this place, my brother had come along and yanked me out.

In the afternoon sun, it was nothing sinister to look at- a windowless false-front that leaned to the east. I'd been on the roof. You got there by climbing a ladder through a trap door in the ceiling of a trailer the owner had attached to the west side, between the bar and a makeshift stage. I wasn't in the owner's bedroom with him- I promise. He was a creep. It was me and a couple of other girls who got bored because all the boys wanted to do was fight. We climbed up on the roof and watched them fight in the dirt lot below.

When I got inside, it was the same bunch of boys from that night. I knew them from school and around- a bunch of smartasses who I should have been afraid of but I wasn't. Tim Shepard was supposed to be in my American Lit class. He'd spent the start of the semester in the reformatory instead.

I walked past him on my way to the phone. He was sitting at a table with a bottle of Grainbelt nursing a broken nose and the quarter-inch haircut they gave all the boys when they locked them up.

"You should see the other guy," he said to me slowly- as if speaking to me was work for him, although I hadn't made a peep to encourage it.

"He ain't here," was all I could think of to say.

"Goddamned right," he said, and I kept walking.

Tim and all of them watched me make my phone call. It was a futile effort. My mom wasn't home. My dad was at work. My best friend was out riding around in a car that actually ran. When I hung up the phone after the third try, they'd all heard enough to decide I might be desperate enough to accept their help.

"Tony's car?" A guy named Pete Decker asked.

I'd seen Pete around and didn't like him, mostly out of bitterness because I considered him to be out of my league. He was fine to look at, having managed to avoid the facial injuries that Tim Shepard had incurred.

I nodded.

"Where at?" Pete fancied himself a lady's man, and this knight-in-shining-armor shit was right up his alley.

"About two miles east towards Catoosa," I said.

"Shit, darling, you walked that? Nobody tried to pick you up?"

"A couple of times. I didn't know them. I guess I didn't feel safe."

Pete and Tim laughed at that.

"And you feel safe here?" Pete asked me.

"Shouldn't I?"

"Well, if you feel safe about it, I'll give you a ride out to your car and we'll see what's wrong."

"What's wrong is it needs an engine," I told him. "Unless you got spare in your trunk, then I just need a ride home."

"Got a rope. We could pull it," Tim said. "At least get it off the highway, then we'll can give you a ride home."

Somehow being alone with Tim and Pete seemed safer than being alone just with Pete. He was sure nice to look at, but he was twice my size. He'd knocked my brother out cold once, and my brother could handle himself in a fight. I already knew he wasn't going to be able to fix my car. He probably knew it too and had other things in mind.

Pete shrugged at Tim and killed off his own bottle of beer. Tim stood up, stretching his fingers like he was expecting a fight.

"That Tony's '48- that car you done in, Weber?" He asked me.

"Yeah, except it was rodents that done it in, not me."

"If you'd known better, you'd have looked before you tried driving it. How long's he had it parked up there?"

I shot him a dirty look. He widened his eyes and made a face back at me. I didn't answer because I was getting the feeling Tim knew exactly how long Tony's car had been parked in that barn. He already knew the year of the make and its location. It was a little early in the morning for him to be showing such an interest in riding out in the middle of nowhere to haul a car back to town.

Pete held the door of the roadhouse open for me. I stopped at the steps and they stopped behind me to light cigarettes.

"Right there," Pete said, pointing with his cigarette towards his own car.

I descended the stairs all the while feeling like they were watching me and sizing me up. Pete, no doubt, was imagining what I was going to look like in his back seat. I figured Tim was looking at me like an opponent, like he did everyone else.

They got in the front on either side and without opening a rear door for me. I slid in behind Pete and to the middle. He turned the key and the engine roared to life. In idle, the car rattled like some invisible force outside was shaking it by its fins. When he dropped it into gear, though, it sped up smoothly. Pete didn't stop at the entrance to the road. He turned north and the car picked up speed so fast that I was pinned against the backseat by the g-force like on a carnival ride.

* * *

My brother's '48 Chrysler glowed in the mid-morning sun. Trailing out behind it was a long, dark stream of oil. Pete made a u-turn and then backed up within a couple of feet of the Chrysler's front bumper. I got out of Pete's car and unlocked the door of my brother's.

I popped the hood and then got out to take a look underneath. Pete and Tim stepped aside and made room for me, exchanging amused glances.

"You even know what you're looking at, honey?" Tim asked.

I didn't know much at the time- I had to give him that- but I knew the chrome on the fender said Chrysler, but the stamp on the engine said Chevrolet.

"I can read," I told him.

They'd swapped the engine- my brother Tony and apparently Tim and Pete. There were eight cylinders now instead of four.

"I can count, too," I added.

"Just can't check a hose," Tim said. "Your fuckin' brother should've known better."

"I told him to call," Pete said to Tim, like he was complaining about an errant child, "before she took it out. I bet that fucker calls tonight to tell us she's got it home. Won't he be surprised?"

I took a step back and put my hands on my hips.

Tim turned to look at me. He imitated my stance, grinning. His eyes glittered, and for an instant I was awestruck.

He said, "Yes?"

"You were going to steal my car?"

"No, we were going to steal your brother's car. Really, it's only about two-thirds your brother's car at this point. I bought that engine. We were going to take it, he was going to collect the insurance, and we were going to race it."

"Well, now what are you going to do with it?" I asked.

"Same thing," Pete answered. "We just got to find it another engine. We'll still give you a ride home, doll. Don't worry."

"No, I need a car. He said I could drive the car."

Tim shook his head.

"Drive it home and out of Rogers County for me what he meant. Probably just slipped his mind to tell you the rest."

I didn't understand all the county vs. city jurisdictional bullshit, but it didn't surprise me that Tim did. It was safer to work on the car across the line in Rogers County than in Tulsa Proper. They'd thought this through- Tim, Pete, and Tony- to have me drive the car back into a city neighborhood where they could steal it. Maybe it was just easier for them that way. They were too lazy to drive up north of town into the country. I'd call the car in when it disappeared from the curb tomorrow morning, and they'd keep it garaged somewhere while they cherried it out. By the time the car was ready to make its debut on The Ribbon the cops would long given up, and Tony would've collect the insurance.

"Well, whatever deal you made with him, it's off," I told them. "I need a car. I got a job."

"Maybe I should just put you in the trunk and Petey and I'll head back to town, little sister," Tim said. "Like I said, that engine's mine."

"That engine ain't worth shit anymore," I reminded him.

Again he raised his eyebrows, mocking me for cussing at him.

"Do what you want, Shepard," I said. "But whatever it is, I'm in on it too now. You still need me to call it in or Tony doesn't get his cash."

"I don't give a shit what Tony gets at this point. What's he going to do to me? He's where- Fort Riley?"

"He's in San Diego," I said.

"Yeah, so he's pretty much out of the deal at this point. If no one calls it in stolen, it doesn't matter. If he doesn't call it in until he gets back from 'Nam, all the better for us."

I set my jaw and glared at him. Pete pushed himself up off the grill and slammed the hood. I jumped a little in spite of myself.

"No good," Pete said to Tim, keeping an eye on me like I was some kind of snake he didn't want to turn his back on. "Now she can call it in and tell the cops she seen us with it, or heard us talking…she can put them on to us."

"Not if she's in the trunk, she can't."

"Come on, brother, pretty girl like that? It's be a waste to stuff her in the trunk like she was groceries. She's worth more than a loaf of bread, ain't she?"

"Barely," Tim said. He thought about what Pete had said.

Pete leaned back and sat on the hood. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and shook one out. He lit it, and then took out another and offered it to me. I knew I was being worked over, but I took the cigarette anyway, leaning in to light it off of Pete's. He winked at me. I stepped back away from him.

"It's fucking hot, Shepard," Pete said. "What do you say we pull this S.O.B. back to Merril's and talk about it over a drink?"

"What's to talk about?" Tim said. He was pretty committed to sticking me in the trunk.

"Ain't any different dealing with her than dealing with Tony. 'Cept she's better to look at."

I wondered if they always worked this way- good cop, bad cop- with Pete buttering up the victim and Tim standing there looking mean.

And Tim did look mean. There wasn't a thing about him I wanted to tangle with- black circles under his eyes and that broken nose. He had a full mouth that I'd seen break into a wide grin on the rare occasion. That mouth looked like it must be something to kiss if only he'd close those serpent's eyes. When he looked at me, mulling over what Pete had said, he looked like he was pondering eating me alive- and not in a good way.

"You feel like talking, Weber?" He asked me.

"More than I feel like being locked in the trunk."

"That's a girl," he said. He snatched Pete's cigarette away and took the final drag. He tossed the butt into the grass and then he was ready to move. "Come on, then. Let's get 'her pulled back to town. Petey'll steer. You can ride with me."

As happy as I was to get off the side of the highway, riding with Tim was about the last thing in the world I wanted.


	3. Chapter 3

SE Hinton owns The Outsiders.

**Treat Her Right**

Three-

The Sleeper was a 1948 Chrysler Windsor with a stolen Chevy Fleetline's engine. Fleetlines were fast: they could top eighty without ever going into overdrive, and the Windsor needed all the power it could get to drag it's ass up to 55. It was a heavy-bodied car. Tim and Pete had chosen their replacement engine well.

Not that I knew any of that in April of 1964 when Tim and Pete towed my brother's car back to town with Pete's. Tim and I didn't exchange a word between us for the duration of the ride. He smoked a couple of cigarettes and hummed along to The Stones on the radio.

We pulled it to a machine shed at the rodeo grounds. Tim and Pete pushed it inside next to a tractor. They came back out into the sun- squinting and wiping their hands on their jeans and talking about if someone named Jesse could pull out the back seat tonight.

"What?" I said. It came out as a squeak.

"Little sister…" Pete began.

Tim interrupted him: "Weber, you need to let go right now any ideas you got about driving that car. You and that car have parted ways."

"Then how am I supposed to get to work?"

"Pete'll take you."

"Every day, all summer long- Pete's going to drive me to work? That isn't going to help his game with the ladies of Tulsa…you think, Pete?"

Pete grinned. He said to Tim:

"You drive her, man. You ain't got anything going."

"Why don't you go fuck yourself," Tim told him.

He looked back at me. My hands were on my hips again, and- again- he mimicked me.

"Where do you work?" He asked.

"I babysit. Pack of little kids deep in the heart of River King territory."

Pete clapped four times as though I'd said "deep in the heart of Texas" and then clapped Tim on the back.

"And you can't walk there?" Tim asked me.

"Do you know where I live?"

"No." He said it like he meant it as an insult.

"Why're you taking the back seat out?" I asked him. Maybe if I acted interested in his shenanigans, he'd cut me a break.

"'Cause that's one heavy fuckin' car. We're going take everything out of it she don't need to run, anything to lighten her up. Then…with that engine…shit…"

He remembered that it no longer had _that_ engine.

"Shit. Shit!" He said again. He turned back to me. "You wrecked that engine, little girl. Forget your ride to work. I don't owe you shit."

"From what I understand, I was part of the plan. No one told me to check the hoses before I drove it back to town to get stolen. Maybe if you had…"

Pete rolled his head back and cracked his neck.

"We can get another engine, man. I got a line."

"With what money?"

Pete shrugged. "The Lord works in mysterious ways, brother. I said I got a line. Drive the doll to work."

I don't know why Tim did what Pete told him. Pete was careful to not overplay that hand, I suppose. Tim was the Word of God among his gang, but Pete was often- I discovered- Tim's voice of reason.

Tim, however, always had to get in one final directive.

"Tell Byrdie it's got to be tonight," he said, already starting back towards the car without me.

I followed him.

"Where're we going?" He grumbled at me as the car peeled in reverse towards the main road.

I gave him the address.

"You're in Corson's American Lit, ain't you?" The car situation resolved in his head, he started making an effort towards actual conversation.

I nodded. "Yeah."

"We through Moby Dick yet?"

I shook my head and smiled. He'd taken Mr. Corson's class before.

"Christ. Let me know when we're through that. I'll come back when it's finished."

"Will do," I said.

Tim fiddled with the radio. I had liked the song that was playing- one by Dusty Springfield- but I guess he didn't. He went on a protracted search for something else, steering the car with the palm of his left hand. I took advantage of the time to think.

Once he'd found a suitable song and was Detroit-leaned back against the seat again, I asked:

"What if I front you some of the money?"

"What if you what?"

I turned in the seat to face him. I asked again:

"What if I front you some of the money?"

Tim cracked a grin. He leaned forward and then back in his seat, shaking his head.

"Listen to you- talking like a gangster. Where'd you learn that line, honey, some Sam Spade movie?"

"Do _you_ have a job?" I asked him.

"In a manner of speaking, I have a lot of jobs."

"I'm just offering- I have a job. I could put up some of the money for the engine."

"And would that be out of the goodness of your heart?" He asked. "Or are you going to try and back me into a corner like you did up there north of town?"

I shrugged. "You're kind of cute when you're backed into a corner, Tim. I kind of like the look of that."

"Christ, did you get like this living with Tony? You are one evil little broad. What's your game?"

I didn't have a game. I had a little money in a savings account, but no idea how much an engine cost.

"What do you think it's going to cost to replace that engine? I'll put up a percentage, and then I want back that percentage of the take when you race it."

"Holy shit." He was laughing now, clearly enjoying himself more than he had all morning. "For how long? The rest of my life? The car's life?"

"Just the first race. After that, after everyone sees it drag for the first time, the jig is up, right? No secret what's under the hood anymore."

Tim nodded. He was still smiling, but getting serious as he mulled it over.

"Twenty percent," he said.

"Which is?"

"Don't know yet. I'll have to talk to Jesse and Petey. You know Jesse Byrd?"

I shook my head.

"You will," Tim told me. "Him and Petey's doing the work. You'll be wanting to get to know your crew, Miss Weber. I can promise- with the deal I just made you- they'll be wanting to get to know you too."

All of the mocking was gone from his voice. We had just entered into a serious business agreement- Tim and I- and I only knew him by reputation and as the tough-looking boy with the sneer who occasionally graced my English classes. The only thing making feel safe at that moment was that Tim didn't know me at all.

"Come back tonight," he said. "To the barn. Your mama let you out of the house after dark?"

"How am I getting there?"

Tim rolled his eyes. "I suppose…Tell your ma you got yourself a date with a nice boy from your English class. That ought to work…unless I got to meet your daddy. If you tell them it's a date, do I have to meet your old man?"

"I'll tell them I'm just going out with some friends."

"That'll do. Tell them you're going to the Nightly Double. I'll pick you up right after dark. Where do you live?"

I gave him the address. Then I asked, "What am I going back to the barn for anyway?"

"Like I said, you're going to meet your crew. And you're going to find out how much dough you're going to be bringing me tomorrow. Petey said he had a line on something. We should know by tonight how much another engine'll be."

It surprised me how fast they planned to work. I had to wonder if Tim was scamming me. Maybe he had no intention of giving the price of an actual engine. Maybe he was just going to take my money.

"How do I know you aren't working me over?" I asked him.

"Fuck…" he whispered, shaking his head. "How do _you_ know…? You want to see a receipt? Baby, this ain't the kind of business with receipts and ledgers. Contrary to what the honest, hardworking people of the world believe, sometimes people like us just got to trust each other."

* * *

He instructed me to call the car in stolen when I got to work. Dealing with the sheriff's office in Rogers County might be a better deal for us than the city police in Tulsa.

I'd have to tell my employers something, I said.

"Better than taking the chance of your parents noticing you never drove it home. You just get on in there and make a scene. Act flustered. You make like you went up to the barn and the car wasn't there. You hitched a ride back to work, okay? You didn't get a ride with anyone you know. First thing you do when you walk through that door is tell those kids mama that you got to call the cops."

I nodded. I must have been frowning. I was thinking about the million ways this could possibly go wrong.

Tim took my chin in his hand and turned my head to face him.

"Don't think, kid. Just do it. Goddamn, it's easier working with my little brother. He never thinks."

I had to smile at that.

"That's not very nice," I said.

"You should hear the shit your brother says about you."

"What? What the hell does Tony say?"

"Gotcha." He winked at me. "Now get on in there. I'll see you tonight."

I got out of the car and started up the walk towards the house. I turned back to look at him once- maybe for courage- but Tim was lighting a cigarette and not looking at me. He already had the car in gear. He drove off before I reached the front door.

I went inside and launched the performance of a lifetime.


End file.
